[LP CYOA] Epic

[a cut of domestic sheep prime]

BAnana Wagon

 

[Azira]

Treave did let Erika warn us that we need to finish this now that the cube has been opened. So that makes the second choice somewhat easier. One thing to consider though, sitting there, listening to him, is he gaining power while we do that? Is it contrary to our purpose? Would it be smarter to try and force a finish?

I don't quite think so. So for the second choice, it seems I'll be getting on the bandwagon.

As to the first. Well. It seems our previous choices point towards Senya not being terribly freedom-minded and self-negating, so I feel C would mesh poorly with the choices picked so far. That leaves A, B and D. We seem to have agreed that the psychopath is just that. Nuts. So I'm leery about D.
Should we go for the StarTrek society of equality (the perfect communistic dream?) or do we praise strength? Or is it all up to willpower?
If the new universe is truly without gods, then why would we need to always strive towards strength? For what conflict would we be preparing?

As such, I'll say Live long and Prosper..

BAndwagon.

 

[Baltika9]

I can't believe this!
You guys do understand that Senya's chatacter isn't set in stone yet, right? This is the choice that actually decides his morality/whatchamacallit. I really don't understand where this is coming from.

As to the first. Well. It seems our previous choices point towards Senya not being terribly freedom-minded and self-negating, so I feel C would mesh poorly with the choices picked so far.

Bro, please. From our very awakening, the plan was "Fuck fate! No gods , no masters." Never once had we made a choice thwt contradicted that. Never once has Senya do anything remotely close to this communist creed of "from each according to ability, to each according to need." Why do we now, for reasons unknown, flop to it.

The goal is and always was to remove and defeat the oppressive interstellar faggots that think they have a right to to toy with lives and it never was about creating some pretentious utopia.

CB, it's the only correct choice.

 

[Tigranes]

Posting from a bus in Ireland because what the fuck is up woth this BA shit? It contradicts everything about Senya and our choicea, down to the Kyrie & academy days. Don't do it, don't do the decline, This isn't Ean

CA for now

 

[TOME]

A - Shulgi
B - Ean
C - Senya
D - Dio

I would like to go with BA but I just don't see that ending well with Senya. CA.

 

[Baltika9]

If the new universe is truly without gods, then why would we need to always strive towards strength? For what conflict would we be preparing?

Wait, what new universe? Bro, you understand that this psychopath was talking about migrating into another reality that is not controlled by the Masters(a problem, since the Masters have dominion over more than one), dumping out the biomass of deconstructed humans and letting those with "will" to emerge from it (kinda like Tolkien's orcs). Or something.

Thing is, we're staying right here, in our reality, with our Terra and fighting for them, and humanity, to the death. I can understand going for strength (which will most likely lead to a dominating Empire), freedom (probably a society inspired by the traditions of the Shin'ar, acquisition of wealth and knowledge) or even the Nietzschean concept of will (no idea what this will lead to).

The communust option seems completely baseless, unsolicited and, to be frank, pretentiously wangsty ("Waah, the world is unfair, so I will make it fair, waah!" I thought Senya got over that back in chapter fucking one.)

 

[Baltika9]

“Based on studies of the Inanna flower, there is reason to believe that they interact as a hive-mind of some sort. Each flower can respond to the others, even over great distances.”

“Yes,” I say warily. “I am familiar with that study.”

“Where do you think the scientists developed their nanomachines from? I told you, I found a more refined method.”

The Inanna flowers. I also recall reading about research involving that, back in the day. They were using the Dunamis and the flowers for nanomachine experimentation.

“Information… turning everyone into goo was just a side-effect. You were… freeing their information from the constraint of their bodies.”

Let me see if I understand this. The nanomachines store biological information (for living beings it would be dna,I'm assuming) and that explains the regenerative powers of Immortals. That also means that those disassembled are not really dead, if we retreive at least one nanomachine containing, say, Kyrie's DNA, it should, theoretically, be able to rebuild her. Right?

So, Rei is going to the Innana flower, containing nanomachines that bear Ean's DNA, and will likely pump them full of energy? The results should be interesting. I am tempted to postpone this conversation until later just so we can make it there and be present during the process. This new information will very likely make a difference in what happens.

As for the "hivemind," maybe that's why Kyrie's connection is unclear: she is too far from the nanomachines to get a good signal and getting closer to them will let her give us the full story.

 

[treave]

Wrong interpretation. The information isn't stored inside any physical construct. Hence being free. How Senya came across this knowledge is something uniquely to do with him. Attending the process or not has the potential for other ramifications, but not further revelations on nanomachines, information and related stuff.

The nanites that disassembled their victims were all wiped out in the bombardment by the way. If even one made it out it'd have continued eating the Earth.

 

[ScubaV]

A - Shulgi
B - Ean
C - Senya
D - Dio

I would like to go with BA but I just don't see that ending well with Senya. CA.

Actually I think Ean would fall under A as well. I remember back when we took over Marduk's empire, we recruited the best and brightest for government and our science initiatives, even if they had affiliations with Marduk's government. Senya, while he has moments of benevolence, is rather cold and calculating. As such I'll vote AA, but flop to CA if BA is winning.

 

[Baltika9]

“Yes. Unfortunately Shulgi interfered before my plan was fully complete. I had to improvise... and then the Star League razed the Earth in fear. Fools, all of them. I would have brought that information with me to a new reality, where our creators hold no sway. ”

Well, him saying that he wanted to bring it somewhere automatically means there is some kind of storage for this information. Now you're saying it's not a physical storage. That means he either memorized all that information or...

Right, our planet's moon-sphere is an egg of another reality. How clever. This guy is starting to give me a very Naram-like vibe, with the whole faith, reality and willpower thing. Are Rei and Senya his remnants?

Edit: ScubaV, I think Ean was a mix of C and A, he valued excellence, but he wasn't a totalist about. He also fought for the freedom of his reality from the Masters.

 

[treave]

It stands to reason that if you get all of his knowledge and memories you'll find out what he had planned with no ambiguity left. I'm not seeing what the fuss is about. There's no real need for speculation, unless you pick 2B.

1A and B require that you rule, if you want to impose a new law on society. 1C means you leave it to everyone else to decide what kind of world they want to live in. It just won't be a world controlled by immortals.

 

[Baltika9]

Because it's fun. And, yes, I'm considering 2B. I really want Senya by the flower with this new information.

 

[treave]

Well, speculate away then. You're also wrong about the sphere though.

 

[Baltika9]

About the sphere, but not about Naram-master, eh?
He is the only one of the original trio who actually had comprehension of the other side. Maybe that is where our peculiar powers come from.

And you still haven't told me if that master who possesed him was Yahweh.
Edit: building an Empire with Senya at the helm sounds hella fun, though.
Edit 2:

The nanites that disassembled their victims were all wiped out in the bombardment by the way. If even one made it out it'd have continued eating the Earth.

I thought they were virtually indestructible. Even being dropped into a sun didn't destroy them.

And, yeah, flopping to 2B. I really want to know what exactly can we do with our knowledge of nanomachines. Regenerate Ean, infuse Rei/ourself/humanity with superpowers? This can have a huge impact on both wars. We can deal with the wanker after.

 

[Rex Feral]

This is more of a question of philosophy. What does "equally" mean? Does it mean that all men should be the same or that they should be treated with equal rights, although them being different ? If it's the first then making everyone equal, like, the same, is, in my opionion, morally wrong AND stagnant from an evolutionary standpoint. If it's about treating men equally and fairly, as in an ideal of justice and fairness, then I would be inclined to follow on that. Although the socialists tried something like this and history has shown me how noble ideas can be easily corrupted into horrible dictatorships.

A is simply too inhumane for me to choose. I'm not even considering it.

And C. Yes. C would do. Do we have the right to choose for everyone ? I believe not. Ordinary men and women should decide how their future should look.

As for the second choice, I'll let you guys handle it. If we stay something might happen outside and we might lose someone because of this. But if we leave there might be worse consequences.
C.

 

[treave]

You're wrong about the Naram thing too. And you're confused about the nanomachines. I said the ones the immortals have were virtually indestructible.

As for 2B, not to sway anyone away from the choice but you are entirely on the wrong track too because right now you don't have too much knowledge of nanotechnology by virtue of not having merged with the 'wanker' yet.

'He' knows what can be done. You don't. Especially since we skipped nanotech focus in favor of black holes. 2B has you taking power, not understanding, because that is the quick way to recover in time.

There is a rather important reason why you might or might not want to tag along on the mission but this is not it. Do continue to speculate though.

 

[Baltika9]

Oh, you naughty tease you.

I dunno, maybe our nanites are connected to Innana flowers and Kyrie is just a voice of another sort. This is weird as fuck, kind of reminds me of the Matrix, when Neo starts to finally understand the source code.

Maybe we'll finally get in contact with Kyrie's informant, or maybe (and most likely) Rei will herp and derp for a little while , not knowing what to do without Kyrie on the spot (since she seems to only follow Senya), decide to nab the flower and break it during her assault on the orbital support batteries.

Anyway, I think it's in our best interest to attend to the flower personally, since it's the last of it's kind and shit.

 

[ScubaV]

If Rei is the creator and Senya is the destroyer and we're about to absorb/assimilate/learn from our more extreme destructive side, we probably shouldn't be near the Inanna flower even if we have good control. Hopefully 2A will put us out of commission for long enough.

 

[Baltika9]

And since when can we not control our powers? Everything should be fine if we don't fool around.

Ooh, could it be Anbar'shi?

 

[treave]

Since you oh so cleverly left the door open for your other self when you've been warned not to, which also counts as fooling around with a side of asking for it.

With the conditional flips from the 1A voters, CA takes it. Backstory dump incoming.

 

[Azira]

Wankers, the lot of them.

 

[Rex Feral]

"Do I trust Mankind to save itself? That's what "I" 've been asking myself. The truth is, I don't know. After everything I've seen, all the fighting, and the chaos around me. I only know what I want to believe: somehow, human decency will triumph. These past few months, I faced many life-threatening situations. I could have given up many times, but my need to know the truth, to uncover the secrets that others were hiding, and to survive, forced me to keep on going. Most of the time, I tried to keep my values in mind, knowing my actions did not have to harm others. I held on to my humanity, resisting the urge to abuse power or resources in order to meet my goals. And in the end, I got the job done. But does this mean I have the right to choose for everyone? No. Because it isn't up to me. It isn't up to the Star League, the Emperor , or the Masters, either. Ordinary men and women will have to decide together what course mankind should take. The kind of people who, time and time again, have picked and chosen the future in highly practical ways - slowing change when it's negative, speeding it up when it's good. Can they do it again? I don't know. But I do know I'm not about to let anyone in this station universe, including myself, stand in their way."

 

[Azira]

Backstory dump, oh

 

[treave]

Backstory

Your earliest recollections are of the glass walls that surround your enclosure. You remember faces that would periodically appear beyond those walls – stern and awe-inspiring, looking down on you – and speak words you were still unable to understand. You shared the enclosure with four others. One by one they were removed, until only you were left. You do not remember their faces. You do not remember where they went. For a child your age, a child of five, you were frail and sickly. Then the project began. There were tests and experiments. Needles were often involved, as was electroshock therapy and drugs. Somehow, you survived. You clung, trembling and shaking, onto your meagre life. You are not sure why you failed to die.

You vaguely recall a nurse teaching you how to read and write, though she was taken away pretty quickly. It did not matter much to you – you continued where she left off on your own, digesting words and sentences and expanding your vocabulary. Though your body was weak, your mind craved to know, to tinker, and to find out more about the world. You began exhibiting an interest in gadgets, which was swiftly discouraged by your caretakers with corporeal punishment. Even so, you managed to dismantle and steal electronics from under their noses. Your inquisitiveness would not be stopped so easily. When you were six, you were moved to a more comfortable facility. The tests continued, but you had new roommates. Some were older than you, some younger. You remember a younger girl that wet her bed. She became a target for the older children. You stood up for her. You were still young then, possessed of a naïve notion of good and evil. The bullies turned to you instead. With your weak frame you could not have fought them off. The girl spent nights tending to your wounds. The administrators did nothing but observe. As long as there were no deaths they would allow anything. After all, it was all part of the experiment. The vessel of God requires strength of body and spirit.

Or so they thought.

At the age of eight, the ritual took place. The vessels had been prepared by a life of purification, reared for this very day. They would open a gate to the space between the stars and call down God from Her Heavenly Throne. All of you were brothers and sisters, born of the Great Mother – your flesh was already divine; your soul had been prepared over the last year, and finally today, your spirit would receive benediction. You remember thinking at the time that the teachings spoke only of one child; you realized that you were there as back-ups. The administrators were not certain whether the ritual would succeed. Your suspicions were confirmed soon enough.

One by one, the children marched in.

One by one, they collapsed, screaming and clawing at their eyes, unable to comprehend what lay beyond. Their minds died before their bodies did, leaving them babbling and insane, writhing on the ground like tortured worms. Men with guns went in after every round, firing a single shot to silence the afflicted child. It didn’t take long for the hysterical children to attempt to run; the men who were smart enough to open a gateway to another dimension were stupid and cruel enough to leave the waiting chamber exposed to the ritual chamber. They could see everything. The guards restrained the children from leaving, cowing them into submission with their guns.

Then, the only ones left were you and the girl.

Her name was called. She gripped your hand tightly, not wanting to go. You whispered something to her, planting a small disc in her hand. The doors to the ritual chamber worked the same way as the other doors in the facility. She gave you a nervous nod, her eyes watery with fear. Then, she entered the chamber. You watched as she surreptitiously places the disc on the side of the doors.

The ritual began again, the ghastly purple light pouring out of the stone ring like a living thing. You watched the girl standing bravely against it, your words bringing her courage. It failed. She lasted longer than most, but she would not last. She started to cry, and you thumb the button. They did not think to search the children, thinking them docile and compliant. Another of their mistakes. The doors to the ritual chamber sprang open, hijacked by the disc she planted. You ran.

The guards tried to stop you, but as the light flowed thickly out of the chamber and into the waiting room, they fell still, their eyes taking in the loathsome illumination. Behind you, the guards began to scream their throats out, their fingernails scratching against their eyelids and cheeks. With one hand you shielded your eyes against the purple light but still they entered your eyes. You saw visions, glimmers of events that have happened, are happening, and will happen. A great tree withering, the skies tearing themselves apart. A lone man huddling in the desert. Jewel-like universes glittering like beads of rain on a spider’s web. At the center of the web lay something massive and monstrous, distorting time and space with its presence. It was constructed from that same, noxious purple light that flooded the chamber. At that instant, when you saw it… you felt your mind twist. It was a strange sensation, as if half of your brain had walked off somewhere. You shrugged it off, yelling away the visions and stretched your hand outwards. You had to reach her before it was too late. Your fingers closed around her cold shoulder. You pulled the girl close to you as you hear the glass tubes shatter into pieces, a loud roar sending the entire chamber into pandemonium. The ritual was out of control. She wasn’t moving – her heart wasn’t beating; the shock of the ritual finally too much for her to take. You refused to accept it. With the stubborness of the child that you were, you clung on to her and screamed in defiance as the world collapsed around you.

When you awoke, you were in a hospital, the girl by your side. You survived again. Perhaps your survival meant something greater, you thought. If the ritual was to bring down a deity into a bodily vessel, then surely it had succeeded, if you were alive. Your life’s purpose had been fulfilled, right? You soon found out that it was not so. The facility had been destroyed – you and the girl were the only ones alive. She had dragged your unconscious body all the way from the ruins to the nearest town. That is where the cult found you again.

The girl began to exhibit powers that no human could possess. It turned out that she was the one chosen by God after all. It did not take the cult long to proclaim her the Messiah. You, on the other hand, remained frail and weak, your growth stunted. They would have killed you, put you out of your misery, had the girl not asked for you as her companion. Your ‘mother’ agreed, at a price. The two of you were initiated early to the cult’s activities. Even now you try to put the orgies and mutilations out of your mind. At one point, they cut both of you open, alive, and implanted little blobs of wriggling black slime into your bodies. The Messiah and her little pet would not be exempt from the rituals. She was expected to learn, and later to lead. The cult did not care so much for purity of the body.

It seemed, then, that your true purpose in life was to serve the Messiah. You found that hard to accept. You did not resent the girl, but you were envious of the way the adults worshipped her. You desired some of that attention for youself. After all, she listened to every word you say. Why shouldn’t the adults do the same? At the age of ten, you began to know ambition. You began to learn voraciously. Strategy. Tactics. Economy. Philosophy. Science. All of these, and more, became the focus of your attention. You wanted to know everything, so that you could be of use, the way the girl was of use. Perhaps if you knew everything, they would listen to you. They did not, and in fact shunned you further for being a ‘little freak’.

At the age of eleven, you convinced the girl to help you sneak into the restricted archives. You had exhausted most of the information available to you, and you were now curious about the experiments that they had performed on the both of you. She agreed, reluctantly. You found what you were looking for, but you were caught. The angry cultists would have beaten you to death, even going against their Messiah’s cries. They were convinced that you were becoming a corrupting influence on her. You would have died then and there, had you not used your power. On the boundary between life and death, you felt the cold of nothingness. All of a sudden, you understood. Your eyes glinted a pale blue as you grasped the structure of the world in your hands; you knew that everything could be reduced to numbers and information, and then, at the end of it all, your assailants were dead, fallen by your hand.

You did not escape punishment for this. Demon child, they called you. A dark one that had crawled out of the portal, sneaking into the world under the light of God to possess a body. They tried to seize you. You tried to fight back. They died. In the throes of their deaths, as they breathed their last in terror of you, as you yourself lay broken and bleeding from their attack, you realized the truth. This world was too cruel and senseless for it to be real. You remembered the thing at the center of universes. You recalled the documents that you read, and came to a conclusion of your own.

‘This world is a false world… no, these worlds are fake, offering only the illusion of life. We are all nothing but numbers, information that is observed and documented in the records of fate. Our reality is subject to more governance than most, bound not only by the rules of the thing which oversees all, but those beings that created us. If that is the case, how different are we from an advanced simulation? The all-seeing eye at the center of worlds is nothing more than a glorified computer imposing the bounds of destiny upon us. There must be something beyond it. A true reality, one where words like fate and destiny have no meaning. I will bring salvation to mankind. Fear is the weapon I will use to strip away the fog that clouds their eyes. They will not believe until I have struck raw terror into the depths of their hearts. Then, once they truly see, they will follow.’

You were finally armed with a sense of purpose. Setting out to subjugate the cult, your rampage was only stopped by the intervention of a man. An immortal whose path would cross yours many times in the future. Shulgi.

The next time you awoke, a few years later, you were in a hospital on the moon.

***

"How can you still think that fear and suffering is the best way to save humanity?" I finally ask.

"The suffering is necessary to induce fear. Fear itself is contagious," I reply. "Once it begins spreading from one person to another, it is simple to sway the minds of the masses."

"I will find another way." I say.

"Hm. Your third way. The path of freedom. It will be a hard path to take. Interestingly, the fate of one person is easy to change. The Akashic records that bind our destiny can be rewritten for one man, as long as it does not create too much of an effect on the fates of others. The fate of humanity as a collective, however, is impossible to rewrite... not within the confines of the system as it is. That is why I sought to reduce every being into pure information, and seek the true reality where that information can be reproduced."

"It would be like recreating a digital design stored in a computer in a physical form."

"Exactly. To reach the true reality I would have to supplant the observer. I cannot see where it is from here. I require God’s throne, so to speak. The nature of our existence is free from such concepts like predestination. We make our own fate. This makes us the only thing that can replace the observer.”

“It is a megalomaniacal goal. Becoming God?”

“There is no other way to achieve this. The observer must be replaced. Do you recall the white creature you saw, back in that pocket dimension?”

“What of it?”

“The observer… God… is imperfect. When something reaches the end of its life – when it dies – information is lost. The greater the sentience, the greater the loss. You could call it a soul, if you believe in that sort of thing. However, the information is lost but not destroyed. The observer simply fails to observe it any more. It becomes a ‘ghost’. That ghost has the ability to transmit its unobserved state to other things, essentially changing them into ghosts just like it. Think of these as corrupted data that infect whatever they teach. The destruction of possibilities, every time we fall into mortal peril and fail to escape, creates even more of these ghosts. With every second the multiverse spirals further into destruction. We have long since passed the point of no return.”

“What if I slay the observer?”

“I am not sure whether the multiverse will continue to exist without an observer. It could be that you will be forced into the role. It could be that we do not need an observer to exist. No one knows.”

“You have no guarantee that you will find what you are looking for either, or that it is even there.”

“True, there is no certainty. Then again, I am mad. You are not supposed to be.”

“Perhaps I am too. Anyway, I think this is getting too deep for me. I came here to seek power enough to defeat a galactic Emperor, and end up going away with a head full of cosmic mumbo-jumbo. I’ll have a hard time digesting everything.”

“Well, if it’s any consolation you won’t have to deal with the really serious stuff until later. Focus on what is ahead of you. It’s all up to you now.”

I reach out and grasp my hand. I am on the armchair, and I am on the throne of thorns.

***

Then, I wake up.

There is a commotion outside the room. I swing my legs off the bed and get up, not feeling any worse for the wear. How much time has passed? When I open the door, I see everyone gathered in the corridors. My mother seems to be squabbling with Selkhet.

“I’m telling you, you can’t move all that equipment in here. I am in charge of this base and I decide what goes where.”

“You may be in charge of the base but you know nothing of where to best put scientific equipment,” says Selkhet firmly. Strange. Did she always talk like that?

I catch Erika’s eye, who runs over to me.

She grabs both of my shoulders and stares deeply into my eyes, trying to see if I’m still me. I laugh. “Hey, relax. It went fine. I remember everything now.”

With a twinge of guilt, I also remember dismembering her. When I had tried to save the world by reducing it to goo, I had wanted to save the ones I loved first. Kyrie and Erika happened to show up at a very inopportune time. I look away from Erika, over her shoulder at my mother and Selkhet.

“What happened?” I ask.

“Well… it’s a long story…”

***

“And so, things definitely did not go as planned,” finished Selkhet – or Sekhenun, as she called herself now. “If this child had not shown up, I would not have been dragged out instead of him. Morphic resonance. It’s always bloody morphic resonance.”

“I’m sorry,” Rei apologizes. “I didn’t think Selkhet would follow me in the room.”

“So,” I begin, “Let me get this straight. You were going to revive some ancient entities living in the flower, and somehow revived the wrong one?”

“You are facing a war, aren’t you?” sighs Sekhenun almost theatrically, as if I’m some slow imbecile. “I’m not the one you really need right now. You want the other guy. It is not my fault that you are incompetent enough to let a child into the room during a very critical procedure.”

“What’s stopping us from sending you back and getting the other guy?”

“No, it cannot be done,” says Sekhenun, rejecting my suggestion outright. “Not for now, at least. The last flower has been used up, and I will need to grow some more. That will take some time. You’ll have to make do with me for now, which is why I strongly suggest that you have my equipment moved where I want them. Even if I am mainly a goddess of science, I didn’t hang around that lout for a thousand years without picking up something.”

“By the way, we already paid for it,” adds Rei.

“Who paid-“ I start in a panic.

“Iannes did.”

“Oh, that’s alright then.” I heave a sigh of relief. “Right, let me just go convince my mom…”

***

Erec and Erika were the only ones that did not manage to complete their mission successfully. Although Julius had been sincere in his offer to defect, he was tracked down and murdered by Federation operatives during the extraction. Before he died, he managed to let Erika know a bit of useful information - Kyrie's grave in Ankida should be empty. Luckily, Rei had received the information and checked it out when she was there, confirming it to be true. In the mean time, the Federation military still seems to be stuck in turmoil, managing nothing more than some half-hearted attacks that were easily repelled. Their generals and admirals seem to be squabbling over who should get the credit. It is time to act against the Federation military.

***


A. We'll launch an attack on the main Federation fleet. We will aim to keep casualties low, aiming to demonstrate the uselessness of their leadership and make fools of them rather than do any lasting damage to their forces.

B. We strike while they are still disorganized and attempt to devastate their forces before they can bring their numerical might to bear against us. The more we kill now, the less we have to deal with later.

C. We attempt a wholly diplomatic approach to reach out to the lower ranking officers - the colonels and the majors, to sway them to our side.The generals and admirals are useless to us.

 

[treave]

Welp, the update went on way too long, so I had to truncate it and it ended up being real choppy, not to mention missing some character setting scenes. Next one will flesh out a bit more on what was going on with the Kyrie-ghost as well as our updated powers.